knp

Is Michael McCormick really a MacArthur genius? Back when I had my medieval phase for a couple semesters in undergrad, I thought I'd gotten a little familiarity with his work, but his website doesn't list anything MacArthur-wise. Is he really just that modest? Dang.

I'm not that old or experienced, so I think that's about all the advice I've got! I just want to say good on you about the acting: most of my best experiences have been things I was somewhat scared to try, but where I knew it might be good for me. (Stretching myself socially/skill wise, not the type of bad risky they make PSAs about.) I remember totally locking up and almost not being able to finish my sentences the first time I had to give a presentation in front of other people...but now I kind of like it! PS There are lots of shy actors who are big Hollywood stars! I couldn't find an article with a non-annoying format, but the internet has lots of lists of shy actors

Oh, by posting those questions, I didn't mean to imply some elitist "nobody should go to graduate school unless they can go to Yale" thing. But I thought they were both important and relevant here (more than usual) for two reasons: 1) No, you should not apply to graduate school if you have never heard that speech, or if you haven't been able to get a reasonable approximation of it by reading Kelsky's blog or the "Ponzi scheme" lit/rhet comp thread (etc). There are still professors out there saying that "good people always find jobs," and I was worried that OP had been hearing that. So I asked about the other point of view because I think it's critical that prospective applicants know that that speech exists. I am not saying you should listen to it. I obviously didn't, as you can see from the little bar to the left that I'm currently applying to graduate schools, but if a person has never heard of that speech, they are making this particular career decision uninformed. It's not that I think it's gospel, it's that it's a perspective I was worried OP didn't know about. 2) One need not enter a PhD program in order to get a tenure-track job, let alone because you want one of the cushy professorships that have not existed for ages, but alt-ac type jobs require initiative and research both to find and to get. OP has demonstrated a tendency to throw their hands up when confronted with fairly basic questions about what academia or their ideal life involves (see previous page). While I agree with you about these non-tenure-track careers, ajtz'ihb, in theory, finding good ones seems beyond OP's planning capabilities right this second, so I chose not to emphasize it. That's normal for traditionally-aged college seniors, OP, but I really think it's an argument for listening to your professors about the time off thing. If you are employed, you will develop more skills on how to find non-academic employment than if you go straight to a PhD. If you're still here, OP, I recommend trying to get in touch with what you want, both out of the next year and out of your life. Get a sheet of paper and start writing, or talk to a friend, or go for a run with your favorite music, whatever gets you thinking. Start by figuring out what you've liked about any job, internship, helping-with-the-chores, volunteering, class experience, whatever. "I hated mowing lawns that summer, but I did like that I got to be my own boss." OK, so "being your own boss" is a good thing. Why do you like anthropology? What did you prefer about it to other courses? Have you met any PhD students? Were they from the sorts of schools where you want to study? Did their lives look like something you want? Okay, that got specific to academia: take it back out and think about what makes a happy life in your mind. Do you want to stay near your family? Is it important to you that your career be all-engrossing? Do you want a romantic partner? Then: are those compatible with the different jobs you're considering? What would you sacrifice first? Then, perhaps even more importantly, what do you want next year? Do you want to be in a safe, institutional environment? Where do you want to live? Do you want flexibility to change your mind about where you're working or living? (Have you tended to change your mind about any past big decisions, like where to live? Or do you not have any big decisions to use as a benchmark?) Once you've thought about things like that, I recommend you talk to your college's office of career services about other careers that could fill your interests and needs, and especially what possibilities exist for jobs that would fill your needs while you take time off. If they are a useless crew, like mine were, I hope you can find some other adviser to ask! This is important. I am not trying to dissuade you from applying to PhD programs; I am not even trying to dissuade you from applying to PhD programs this year without taking any time off. What I am hoping to do is to persuade you to do some hard thinking about what you want and why, so that even if you still decide to apply to PhDs next year and enroll in one, you will have done it with a firm background understanding of why you chose it and what you're hoping to get out of that decision.

Thanks, r_s! OP, I am still interested in the answers to these two questions:

Right, and, especially because financial independence is emotionally important to you, it's both possible and a good idea to research how to minimize the risk of having to take that path. Your professor came out OK, because she managed to get a good job! But many PhD graduates end up trapped in adjuncting cycles that pay, if anything, less than their graduate stipend did. Then you might never be able to pay off the debt! (Has anybody given you the DON'T GO TO GRAD SCHOOL, THERE ARE NO JOBS, IT'S RIDICULOUSLY COMPETITIVE TO GET EVEN THE WORST JOBS, AND THE PAY IS TERRIBLE speech yet? Have you heard the words "adjunct crisis"?) So while eliminating the possibility of acquiring living expense debt in graduate school is impossible—people do have sudden, unexpected costs, e.g. medical bills, or having to take unpaid time off for family reasons while still having to pay your rent—you for sure want to avoid going to programs where it's normal to graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in debt for normal living expenses. If you go to a program where you acquire $30k of debt for living expenses and you find yourself with a $20k medical bill, then you're doubly screwed. Do your research, both about the school's academics and the financial ramifications of its stipend; apply broadly; do really consider taking that gap year; and that should give you about as much insurance as possible against bad situations.

Make a list of the five or ten most interesting papers you have already read. Do two or more of them share a topic? Like, they're all about "online shopping," but two of your ten are about how to optimize discounts to get profits. Okay, that gives you a narrower topic, optimizing discounts. Then start reading about that subtopic. After you've read another twenty or thirty articles—this count includes articles where you stop after 2 pages because you weren't interested, because not being interested in something is as helpful for narrowing down your interests as being interested in another thing—do another two or three have something even more specific in common? Like, now these are all about discounts, but three or four are about using discounted trial memberships to get people to stay members of a subscription service. Reiterate ~3 times until you have a less massive topic. When you have that, you can go talk to your professor about how to ask a problem-solving question about that topic.

Honestly, I would prioritize researching that, along with everything else you're doing. What would you do if you accepted a PhD offer and then found out that the stipend was too low? You can usually figure out whether any given university will pay enough to live on, in broad strokes, using theoretical knowledge you can glean from the internet. You'd do this by looking up average cost-of-living in the area (utilities, food prices, rent, etc.) will you have to have a car, what the stipend is, how many fees there are, whether other students at the school tend to pick up debt for their living expenses, calculating how much you'll need to pay each month for any previous debt you have (if you don't decide to defer payment while in school), etc. If you're thorough, researching those things will give you a pretty decent foundation in whether the university will pay enough to live on. (Find a "budgeting your expenses" worksheet if you're afraid of leaving off a big category.) At the same time, though, that's another argument for the gap year idea. Doing Americorps or getting a job would also get you a much more "real" sense of how far a dollar can go. Americorps doesn't pay a lot, but that's almost a plus for this, because it's in the realm of many graduate stipends.

If you are applying to schools in the top 50—as judged by pretty much any ranking of prestige you choose, whether by the university overall or anthropology-specific—most of them should offer full funding. "Full funding" means "full tuition reimbursement and a stipend for your work." Nobody (who wants an academic career) should ever go to a US PhD that expects you to help pay tuition, or that does not offer a stipend. This is not unique to you, trust me! We are all looking for this, and if you get admitted to a top 50 program, it is likely that you will be "fully funded." Just glancing over one list of top 50 universities, there are only three that I know do not offer full funding to their entire admitted cohort. (Indiana at Bloomington, for example, does not fund all their admits, although it probably varies by department). That said, I don't know about the funding in about 20 of these universities, but there are about 27 of them that I do know fully fund all of their admitted students. But! There is another, related issue, that I think may be the concern you're trying to express. "Fully funded" sometimes still doesn't provide very much stipend money; UNC pays like $12,500. (Although I will note that that is an exceptionally low stipend. They do also have opportunities to win university-wide fellowships that pay more.) When you say that you need full funding, do you mean that you can't go anywhere unless they offer a stipend over X thousand dollars, because you have living expenses that can't be met with less? That should be more or less easy to figure out from the university websites, or the various "grad school funding spreadsheets" floating around this website. If you need $16,000 to be happy and $18,000 in higher cost-of-living areas, you can certainly figure that out before you apply, and save yourself the application fees! PS Please excuse the bolding and italics, I've been writing my NSF essays and their over-formatting bug has bitten me. (And good suggestion about the outside funding!)

Over in the history forum, it seems that the Japanese studies people tend to recommend that, if you need more language practice, you apply to EALC master's programs as well as to PhDs. There are also, if I remember correctly, a lot of decent-paying options to go teach English and take Japanese coursework in Japan itself. ("A lot" meaning "two or three, I think" since I'm coming from a perspective where my main language has zero such opportunities). I wonder if that's a suggestion worth considering for you, too? But this is not my region: when you've talked with your professors about your PhD applications, what have they recommended?

I hate writing about myself. Hate it. But for some of these applications, I am required to do so in a substantial way. (The 'personal' paragraph in most SOPs is fine.) This aversion is making things difficult, because my rational brain knows I need to get it done, but my id is behaving like a naughty toddler, getting in the way and yelling "NO!"

The thing about the volunteer programs you have listed is, they should let you live on your own without going into debt. Peace Corps should provide housing, and I think Americorps volunteers tend to share apartments between a number of them. No savings, for sure, but independence. What field of anthropology are you? I wonder if professors might be particularly likely to recommend time off to gain emotional maturity if you intend to enter one of the interview-based research fields, because your evidence will often come from connecting with people from wildly different backgrounds and ages, which is easier with practice. PS I am pro time off because I am currently at the end of my year(s) off. It was very helpful! I am putting together proposals that are 50x more mature and thoughtful than I could have last year, which would have been 10x more mature and thoughtful than I could have written as a college senior. I'm sure there are other people who wouldn't find it as helpful—I can't guarantee 10x better, let alone 500x—but I in particular only discovered my desired field late in college, so I've spent the past couple years growing into the idea and refining my interests.

Oh, interesting! It sounds like good stuff, whereas I had been leery that your interests were a smorgasbord of things you'd once read a couple books about. (I seem to run across a lot of people who say they're interested in "Africa!" without knowing there's a difference between Johannesburg and Cairo. I appreciate the enthusiasm, but also find it draining. My post was intended as a mild warning in case you had tendencies in that direction, which I am now reassured about.) You seem to have a pretty good methodological unity that makes sense across at least two fields. Beyond that, you're beyond the limits of my knowledge!

I'm wondering whether you might be placing too much emphasis on the idea of switching fields once admitted. Many people switch from fields with higher linguistic burdens to lower ones (medieval to US, e.g.). Doing it the other way around is possible, and it happens, but it's really difficult. It would probably be best to prepare for your actual favorite before you start applying, since it's hard to pick up a lot of new languages once you're in a PhD program. Switching to early church history from early American will be more or less impossible unless you take some years now and start picking up Koine Greek, Syriac, Latin, etc. (If you were applying for that from the start, for reference, you might be admitted with only a solid knowledge of Greek, and learn the rest later; not my field). Medieval would likewise be difficult, although probably a little less so. I'm also curious what sort of medieval economic history you're interested in—some economic historians believe that such a thing can't exist, because there isn't enough data. I don't think that's the general opinion, but data is still even harder than it would be for early American. Do you know what period or region of Africa you're thinking of? It's huge, and knowing what period you're talking about is just as important as knowing that information for U.S. history. It is probably possible to study its modern economic history with only English, or English and French, since although "Africa" is a region of intense linguistic diversity, a lot of sub-Saharan economic information will be in one of the old colonial languages. (Portuguese to be even more complete). The Mediterranean requires Arabic, which is harder, especially because it has so many different varieties. But are you thinking of doing the economic history of Africa in the same period as your other interests, like 1400-1700...? You could maybe do an economic history of some of northern Africa for that period, since the Ottomans were meticulous about their records, or join the growing scholarly interest in the "Atlantic world", which includes studies on the economics of European trade, especially the slave trade. Those are really different paths, though. What are your two history research papers about?

I've seen this happen, too. A friend had a fellowship that was normal for her urban private university: not terrible, but still a stretch given the high COL. Her advisor recommended that she apply for xyz fellowship, which paid something like 5k less. She asked "Oh, does the department make up the difference?" "No," the advisor said, "but the prestige is worth getting paid $20k less over four years." She applied (I don't know why), but luckily she didn't get it! Anyway, I hope one of fuzzy's suggestions work for you. And congratulations!

That score is probably fine for the schools you've listed, but from the number of posts you've made about this, I get the sense you'll feel better if you retake it under more optimal conditions. Do you have the money? If yes, why not take it? You say you're worried about time, but it sounds like you shouldn't need to study much more: you were well-prepared for the last one, apparently, you just got sick. At the same time, that AW is really good, and that's important. Basically, I've said this because I don't think you'd listen to me if I gave you a "that score is good, don't worry about it!" speech. Your score is good enough to give it, I think, but you seem very worried. If, on the other hand, you really don't have the time and/or money to take the thing again, just say the word and I'll write the speech.

PM me; I probably shouldn't advise about 'too technical' (since my field is so far from yours), but I've worked as a paid writing teacher and I can certainly help with the latter two questions.

As someone whose thoughts are often very! scattered! one thing that has helped me is writing stuff out on paper, often several times. This started as a fits-and-starts habit of keeping a diary, but it's even more helpful for me for intellectual work. For some reason my thoughts come much clearer if I can't produce them quite so fast, made slower by the process of handwriting. Sometimes I write freeform, sometimes I write outlines. If I were in your situation, I might make a brainstorm-style list of "subjects I like" on four corners of a paper, and write pros and cons of each, to see if there are some common pros that might help clarify my thinking. This lets me produce better snapshots of my thoughts at any point, even as they change from doing further reading, and let me pursue further paths with a little better information about how I'm feeling. Although if you decide to take an outline to show a professor of yours at some point, I recommend that you not do like I did that one time, and bring an outline that includes the bit "à is fucking complicated!" I might not have noticed, but my professor sure did.

I'm sorry that happened to you. Can you talk to your mentor about it? He might have ideas on how to fix the problems that have arisen if you raise them specifically.

That's what I thought I would do, too, but from my experience, I'd budget 2x as much study time for the LSAT as for the GRE. It'll work out fine if you do that, but I budgeted the same amount of time and that was way too little.

I do like starting with articles, sometimes, because I can crank through a lot more topics a lot faster that way. (Yes, it's slower to read a journal article than a book chapter, but the slowest of all for me are book introductions, and those are usually unskippable.) Then if I like what I'm seeing, I go find the author's book(s). Second the idea that reading the newest stuff, rather than classics, is very helpful for generating new ideas. I always, always take notes, too. They don't have to be formal. (Mine are not. "wood engraving insulted as 'mechanical,' vs. new more naturalistic copper/steel engraving (p. 85). huh! v interesting"). I'll usually think of a couple comments I'd make on a paper, like, "this is a great analysis of group A, I wonder whether anything similar happened with group B". If I write them down, I have them! (I always write them in a digitally searchable form, but YMMV). If I do not write those thoughts down, I forget and they fly away as soon as I'm distracted by something else, and I never actually look into whether that theme appears with group B. Practicing finding this sort of "but what about Z" question, and then preserving that question in my notes, has been key for me in my academic life so far, and I expect it to continue to be so.

Hello! I have no answers, but I am also interested in this. I have a history BA, but two of the professors I'd most like to work with are in anthropology departments. (I'm interested in ritual change and millennial movements in colonial contexts in the past, so two of my favorite works of scholarship were written by anthropologists using period sources.) I'm aware that I would end up in pretty different places with a history or anthropology PhD on the same topic, but the scholarly fit is so good that I'm inclined to apply to both types of programs and see what happens.

I've been reading up on linguistic anthropology, because some of it is really interesting and relevant for me. It's funny. Some of these articles are wonderful and clear and so interesting. Some other ones seem to be basically just a headache distilled into words.

I'm so not an expert on this, but I can't imagine a more reasonable explanation for why you're applying to other PhD programs than "my funding ended and was not replaced with any more."

If this doesn't get much attention over the next day or two, you'd probably have more luck posting it in the Literature/Rhet Comp discipline-specific board!